Hospital patients and their families, professors from out of state and tourists from around the world regularly flock to UCLA by the thousands.
Those with vehicles may take advantage of visitor parking, and starting July 1, they will be paying slightly more for the privilege.
Daily parking fees will increase from $9 to $10 on campus, and from $10 to $11 at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, said Lisa Koerbling, the associate director of parking and finance for UCLA Transportation and Parking.
Koerbling said the move was made to offset Transportation and Parking’s increasing operating costs. Transportation and Parking, which oversees the 24,000 parking spots on campus and sponsors programs such as Zimride and BruinGo!, receives no money from the state. As such, its funds are raised almost exclusively through parking fees, she said.
Koerbling said daily parking fees will go up so monthly permit prices don’t have to.
“We went ahead with the daily fee increase because we don’t want to burden students and faculty (who purchase monthly permits). This year student fees are already going up,” she said.
Grace Yoon, a second-year student at the California School of Culinary Arts, said she uses visitor parking almost every week when she comes to UCLA to visit her boyfriend.
Yoon said that because students and faculty use parking spots far more than visitors, it’s only fair that fees should increase for them, as well.
She said the $1 increase is not a big deal, but she doesn’t see why parking should cost so much to begin with.
“I don’t think parking should be free, just not as expensive,” she said. “At (UC Santa Cruz), you only pay like seven dollars a day.”
Transportation and Parking currently takes in over $45 million in annual revenue and spends nearly $33 million on operating costs, according to a recent balance sheet. The rest of the money is used to fund projects, Koerbling said.
The decision to increase parking fees was necessary, she said. She added that money collected from the additional fees will help to fund the completion of seismic retrofitting and the installation of energy efficient lighting in some parking structures.
But Yoon said she is concerned parking fees will only increase with time.
“Parking already costs a lot, and especially in this economy every bit counts. But they’re obviously just going to continue raising the price,” she said.
Daily parking fees were last increased on July 1, 2008, when they went up by $1 per day.
Student and faculty permit fees rose then as well, from $61 to $63 per month.
Monthly permit fees, which cost $43 in 2000, have gone up seven out of the last 10 years, according to Transportation and Parking records.